Their church government is Episcopal, with the same form of patriarchal control which dominates the Greek Church in Turkey. The bishop of the main body of the Armenians resides at Etchmiadzin, their holy city, now in Russia, not far from the Turkish borders. There is also a bishop on the island of Octamar in the lake of Van, and another at Cis in Cilicia, each with a small following. The bishops have authority over the spiritual affairs of the Church, like the ordaining of priests and vartabeds, while the two patriarchs, one at Jerusalem and one at Constantinople, control its temporal affairs. As these patriarchs, and especially the one at Constantinople, are in a measure the appointees of the sultan, and as he represents his people in all their government matters, the office is largely political and secular. The importance as well as the delicacy of the position is greatly increased during the times of political unrest. At its beginning, the Church was as pure in doctrine and practise as was the Greek Church at Constantinople. It was an important branch of the Church of Christ on earth. The location of the unprotected Armenians, in a country swept by invasion and persecutors of every kind, made the position of the Church a most trying one. As illiteracy increased, the spoken language of the people underwent marked changes. The Church possessed most sacredly guarded manuscript copies of the Scriptures and beautiful liturgies, all in the then spoken language of the people. These were read at all church services and sermons were preached by the officiating clergy. As the spoken language changed during the last ten centuries, under the blasting influence of Mohammedan rule, the sacred books of the Church ceased to speak to the people. The priests read the words of the ritual, but neither they nor the people understood it. The church was too holy a place in which to make use of the vulgar vernacular, so the sermon was discontinued because there was no one to preach in the classic tongue of the race. Under these conditions the Christianity of the Gregorian Church became, for the most part, a religion of form, from which the spirit had departed. Thus bereft of the true power of Christianity and subject to the temptations and persecutions of the Moslems among whom they dwelt, it is not strange that the Christianity of the Gregorian Church lost its vital power. VII. MOSLEM PEOPLES